


The Burden of Bucharest

by Ribbonsflying



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel
Genre: Bucky Barnes in Bucharest, M/M, Memories, Snacks & Snack Food, Snipers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:46:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29820297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ribbonsflying/pseuds/Ribbonsflying
Summary: Steve was quiet a long time, just listening. Bucharest didn’t sound like New York. Sure, there was the sound of cars and dogs and music and various machinery, but it was still somehow distinctly different.“Why did you choose here?” Steve asked.“For the mission? It’s where we thought was best to-““For yourself,” Steve interrupted. “When I found you here.”-Conversation between Steve and Bucky on a cold rooftop one night in Bucharest.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37
Collections: BBB Special Events, Stucky Bingo 2020





	The Burden of Bucharest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KOranges](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KOranges/gifts).



> A few prompts from different places all went into this one.  
> First there's "I look for you in everyone" given to me by [KOranges](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KOranges).  
> Second there's "Bucharest" from my Flash BBB card (Card 3, Square 4).  
> And lastly, there's "Your pal, Your buddy, Your Bucky" from my Stucky Bingo card (E3).

“I love you,” Steve had said, steamy puffs of his breath escaping out into the cold air, and his voice sounded as if he were just realizing it.

“Well, yeah,” Bucky laughed and Steve‘s eyes crinkled up as a smile spread across his face. "Back atcha." He finished setting up the stand he planned to use and reached into his bag to pull out one of the rifles he’d brought.

“No, Buck, I mean it.”

Bucky glanced up from the pieces he had started assembling.

“What’s your point, Steve? Something wrong?” Bucky’s eyes flicked across to where Steve was crouched down so he’d be hidden behind the short wall around the rooftop.

“You planning to sacrifice yourself doing something you think is noble and I think is incredibly moronic?”

Steve shook his head. “No, no. None of that.”

“Okay,” Bucky replied as if he didn’t quite believe him. “I agreed to let you come because you were acting weird and I was worried about leaving you alone. Now, I’m mildly concerned you’re going to do something completely out of your mind like scream and alert the target to our position.”

“What if they have their own security and they want to use this spot as their lookout too?”

“I guess I’ll be glad I brought back up.”

Steve shook his head. “When are they expected to meet?”

“Oh, no time soon,” Bucky assured. “Natasha said four am. It’s not even midnight so we can whisper for now. You’re not about to tell me you have to pee, are you?”

Steve shook his head again. From the hotel rooftop where Bucky was setting up his rifle, the sounds of the city were so far below that one could almost imagine they were somewhere peaceful instead of a hotel rooftop just a short distance from the where Bucky had been found living just a few years before. 

Steve was quiet a long time, just listening. Bucharest didn’t sound like New York. Sure, there was the sound of cars and dogs and music and various machinery, but it was still somehow distinctly different. 

“Why did you choose here?” Steve asked. 

“For the mission? It’s where we thought was best to-“

“For yourself,” Steve interrupted. “When I found you here.”

“I’d only been here a few weeks,” Bucky said nonchalantly as he twisted on the scope and then checked the view.

“Bullshit.”

“I’d only been there a few weeks _that time,”_ Bucky amended. 

“Maybe,” Steve allowed. 

“It was one of a few safe houses I had set up. I rotated through them.”

“So are you telling me you have safe houses still set up all over the world and you could just take off at any time?”

“Are you saying you want to test that?”

“No!” Steve said a little too loudly. 

“Shh!” Bucky’s reminder was short and clipped and Steve quieted his tone again. 

“No,” he said softer this time. “I just finished saying I love you.”

“And I just finished wondering if you were okay.”

Bucky examined all of his set up a few times and then sat down easily beside it and pulled out a granola bar.

“I think there’s something about this place now," Steve confessed quietly. I’d never been to Romania before that. We didn’t end up here during the war, you know. We stayed farther north in Hungary and the SSR.”

“Hungry?”

“No, Hungary.”

“I’m asking you,” Bucky corrected, holding out the granola bar. 

“Oh. Thank you.” Steve took it without opening it and Bucky fished out a second one from his bag for himself.

“So this place makes you think of then?” Bucky asked, filling in the blanks.

“Yeah, I guess. Makes me think of chasing you through a city you knew so well and I was just figuring out. And then having to follow the armored vehicle back after they arrested us.”

“Wonder what Rhodes thinks of this place.”

“Rhodey?” Steve asked. “I don’t know. He’d probably been here before. He’s been everywhere. And to him, it was just another mission.”

“To you it was saving me.”

“They had orders to shoot on sight,” Steve reminded. His voice still sounded frustrated all these years later.

“Strange they would send me back here with my own guns now then, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess, but I was just thinking about it,” Steve told him with a soft smile in the darkness. “And I love you. And I’m glad you’re here.”

Bucky ripped open and took a bite of his own granola bar. “They were shooting at you too,” he reminded around a mouthful. 

“Semantics.” Steve picked at the edge of his own bar. “They were only shooting at me and Sam because we were helping you.”

“I have a hard time believing 117 countries decided _that_ was okay. Shooting at two Avengers?”

Steve shrugged in agreement, but didn’t say anymore. No one had been happier than he was to see The Accords fall apart. “You know, right before that, the disaster in Lagos? I think we always talk about the tragedy and the fallout from our mistakes. Did I ever tell you what happened right before?”

“You said Rumlow was there and taunting you about me. He said I cried and tried to distract you so he could kill you.” Bucky looked less interested in his granola bar now as he turned his head to look at Steve.

Steve’s face was all hard lines and furrowed brows. “His exact words to me, which I will never forget, were, ‘You know he knew you. Your pal, your buddy, your Bucky.’ And he sneered your name with such malice. They never called you that so it was just to taunt me with the personal nickname, I guess. Then he says, ‘He remembered you. He got all weepy about it. Till they put his brain back in a blender.’”

Bucky looked down at his lap. “I don’t even really remember him from any of the others, but he sounds like a perfectly despicable man.”

“Yeah. No joke.” Steve finally raised his granola bar to his mouth and took a bite as if he just needed something to do to distract himself, but the thing tasted flavorless right then anyway. “Still want to go after his piece of shit sidekick Rollins every time I think about them.”

“Which, knowing you, is constantly.”

“Yeah,” Steve admitted, nodding toward Bucky’s granola bar as if reminding him it was there. “Thought he would surface after Rumlow died. Even while I was headed here, part of me thought it may be a trap by him.”

“So you were on the lookout for him and me?” Bucky asked as he took another bite to make Steve happy.

“Yeah. It just seemed like the kind of shit thing Hydra would do. Feed fake tips of you to lure me here with some false hope. Take another shot at what Rumlow failed to do.”

“But you still came,” Bucky said around another mouthful.

“Of course!” Steve defended quickly. “We’d been looking for you for two years. We followed every lead possible. I looked for you in _everyone.”_

“But you started looking for Hydra in everyone too.”

Steve shrugged and didn't deny it. "It never hurts to keep your eyes open just in case. Then I looked through your apartment and I knew it was really you.”

“I was doing okay here,” Bucky said, trying to lighten up the conversation. “Sure, I had to watch over my shoulder every minute, but I was content. I was coming back from the farmer’s market when I found out everyone was after me for the UN thing.”

“I knew you’d changed when you entered your apartment without me ever hearing you. You were always talking and laughing before. And I usually hear everything.”

Bucky smirked. “No, you don’t. You only think you do.”

“Now I’m just uncomfortable.”

“Kind of wonder what happened to that place I was staying. German police probably blew it to hell.”

“It was fixed," Steve promised. "The Accords, well, just Tony or T’Challa probably, made sure it was back in even better condition than they found it.”

“Oh. That’s nice.” Bucky finished his granola bar and reached for Steve’s playfully. Steve held it out to him. “I’m kidding, Steve. Eat that.”

“You sure?”

Bucky arched an eyebrow pointedly so Steve took another bite.

“I’d rent a place there again,” Bucky said, lying back on the floor of the rooftop and placing his hands beneath his head. “The landlord was a nice, old man. He made glass wind chimes with different colored glass shards he found and would give them to tenants. I hadn’t gotten mine yet, but I was hopeful. Then you guys broke in and it all went to hell. He might not would give me one if I lived there now. Probably not. I did cause a lot of destruction.”

“Maybe we could buy one from him.”

“Ooh! Maybe!” Bucky said excitedly, remembering to keep his voice low. “Would that bother you? If we got one and took it back to Brooklyn with us?”

“No, of course not. Not if it’s something that makes you happy.”

Bucky was quiet another moment, just listening to the wind before looking back at Steve. “What do _you_ want?”

“It’s just a wind chime. It’s fine. Do what makes you happy.”

“No,” Bucky said, shaking his head and looking at Steve sitting up beside him. “There’s something sad about you right now.”

“I told you, Buck. This place just makes me remember a lot of not-so-great times.”

Steve offered Bucky the granola bar again and Bucky made a show of looking away at anything but Steve so he wouldn't take it.

“So you think of coming here after Rumlow teased you and finding me and getting arrested.”

“I thought they were going to kill you!" Steve stage whispered. "Even I thought you did it- the UN bombing. I’d come here to take you in.”

“You kind of did take me in,” Bucky reminded.

“But I didn’t believe you’d done it anymore.”

“What changed your mind?”

“You told me you didn’t," Steve answered as if it could truly be that simple. "And you deserved to have someone believe you.”

Bucky sat up again and looked at Steve. “Okay, you know what? That is some A-plus quality partnership right there. And just for that, I am going to tell SHIELD we are staying here a few days because I love you too and you need new, different, _good_ memories of this place.”

Steve grinned. “Like what?”

Bucky paused to think. “Well, there’s a farmer’s market,” he teased and Steve grabbed him and wrestled him into a hug. Bucky only sat there a moment before craning his head and taking a bite off of the granola bar in Steve’s hand. “And after that, we can explore together and make new memories.”

“We can,” Steve agreed with a smile. “And when we do, I’m only gonna be looking at you.”


End file.
